The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
Confederate States of America Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
Excerpts:
"
fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right . . . The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation . . . the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations . . . but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation . . . The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor. We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection . . . and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens . . . On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. Source: ASCII Text Prepared by Justin Sanders from J.A. May & J.R. Faunt, *South Carolina Secedes* (U. of S. Car. Pr, 1960), pp76-81.
I’ve enjoyed participating in these WBTS discussion on FR over the years. One of the many things I’ve learned is that you can find documents and writings from the era that prove either point. For some folks, continuation of slavery was THE thing. For others, it wasn’t even a consideration. What I do know with certainty is that it defies logic and common sense to believe that the hundreds of thousands of non-slave holding southerners who fought and died did so because they wanted black people to be slaves, even though they owned none nor benefited from their enslavement.
Another thing I know with certainty is that Abe Lincoln and the north decided once and for all whether the union would be a lose knit collection of sovereign states or just a collection of federal government subunits. Abe and the yankees put the wheels in motion that have torn down state autonomy and allowed Marxist pigs like Obama to take power.
At this point it doesn’t matter why the WBTS was fought...this is the outcome.
We have no way of knowing, but given the fact that every other civilized nation in the western hemisphere abandoned slavery, there is no reason to not believe it would have been abandoned in the Confederacy as well...given enough time and pressure from the rest of the world. Had Abe simply let the South go and two separate nations emerged, I dare say the union would Marxist nirvana/hell and the Confederacy would still be living under the original concepts of the Constitution.